feminist blogs

Hey, Chloe, Upload the Schematics of This Post to My PDA: What is an action hero's most important skill? Literacy. According to University of Louisville professor Bronwyn T. Williams, "the typically-male action hero is capable of reading and writing effortlessly, even under duress. His superior literacy practices give him an edge over supervisors, bureaucrats, and scientists, whose literacy skills may render them incorrect or narrow-minded, and allow him to outmaneuver the villain." Unfortunately, literacy is simultaneously and somewhat paradoxically considered feminine and unnecessary at critical moments -- and it's left up to "literacy surrogates," who can often be women, such as Chloe from 24.

The Little Red Empowering Machine: Speaking of male action heroes, they always seem to get the coolest cars. But Joanne Sasvari notes that for women in popular culture, cars are an escape and a symbol of freedom, even if "a woman's car almost always means she's fast -- in more ways than one."

Sex Surprises: Using a "high-tech eye-tracking gizmo," an Emory University study reveals that men are more likely to look at a women's face before moving to other body parts and that women (who were less interested in looking at faces) will look at pictures of heterosexual sex longer than men. The authors of the study offer a biological rationale: "Women can tell by looking at naked men whether the guys are in the mood [...] but women's bodies don't reveal much. Which is why men home in on their faces."

"Style Your Hijab!": So, the new teen magazine Muslim Girl is attempting to appeal to an underserved market but with more tack and taste than, say, Seventeen. While the magazine's seriousness of purpose is certainly laudable, I wonder if simply toning down the sex and the sassiness makes the advice columns, celebrity profiles, and fashion dos-and-don'ts more palatable.

"I was drunk and bald way before Britney": The obsession with celebrity and scandal in pop culture and politics has been -- I guess it's not such a surprise here -- a big boon to the t-shirt industry.

Off the Mark: Iraqi performance artist Wafaa Bilal got a lot of press earlier this year for confining himself to a room with a paintball gun and allowing people around the world to shoot him by manipulating the gun through his website -- all in protest of America's approach to the war in Iraq: "To the Western media it’s a virtual war going on in Iraq -- we’re far removed in the comfort zone. We’re allowed to disengage from the consequences of war. We don’t see mutilated bodies, we don’t see the toll on human beings.” Well, in the end, he got quite a reaction (over 40,000 shots were fired over 42 days), but it's not clear whether the web visitors understood the political context or were just looking for a little shoot-'em-up fun. You might want to work your way back through Bilal's unsettling video blog.

Twist and Shout: Last week marked the 21st anniversary of "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." Well, Erin Dionne was celebrating it -- why weren't you?

A Pundit Primer: In a possible lesson for the 21st Century, YouTube ended up giving James Kotecki a lot more than 15 minutes of fame. It got him a potential career. Kotecki, if you recall, was the Georgetown student who dispensed advice about presidential candidates' online videos -- from his dorm room, on YouTube. Two of those candidates, Republican Ron Paul and Democrat Mike Gravel, actually ended up visiting his dorm room -- and most of the other candidates made it clear they were paying attention. Since he's graduated, Democrat Dennis J. Kucinich and Republican Mike Huckabee have met him at more traditional locales around Washington -- and CNN, NPR and others have come calling.

I Forgot About the Kids - D'oh!: A Marymount Manhattan College study reveals that, among the college students surveyed, fictional television fathers -- think Homer, Raymond, etc -- rated higher than the students' real fathers. The reason, researchers and cultural critics agreed, was that the work demands on fathers are increasing -- and they have much less quality family time.

Online gaming makes you a better businessperson, according to a new study. Collaboration, rapid-fire decision-making and opportunities for leadership are just a few of the skills that World of Warcraft and EverQuest -- or IBM's new Innov8, which IBM is marketing directly to corporations -- are apparently teaching better than your nearest MBA program.

IBM, Stanford, and MIT collaborated with Seriosity, a new company focused on developing corporate software solution inspired by multi-player games, to look at how these online environments effectively mimick the challenges of a global economy:

One of the key findings from the research, says Thomas Malone, an MIT professor of management and Seriosity board member, is that companies need to create more opportunities for flexible, project-oriented leadership. In fast-paced games, people can jump in to manage a team for as little as 10 minutes, if they have the needed skills for the task at hand. "Games make leaders from lemmings," says Tony O'Driscoll, an IBM learning strategist and one of the authors of the study. "Since leadership happens quickly and easily in online games, otherwise reserved players are more likely to try on leadership roles."

The study points out that games can become "management flight simulators" of sorts, letting employees manage a global workforce in cyberspace before they do so in the real world. More than half of the managers surveyed say playing massive multiplayer games had helped them lead at work. Three-quarters of those surveyed believed that specific game tools, such as expressive avatars that can communicate via body language, as well as by voice and typing, would help manage remote employees in the real world.

Of course, many of the players of these games take on leadership roles because they are games and not the real world. Regardless of the virtual global economic utopia envisioned by many of these consultants, improving human-to-human interaction -- and increasing genuine social skills -- will matter for a very long time.

In any case, this is definitely a much cooler way to spend time at business conferences than listening to yet another PowerPoint.

Naomi Wolf in the Washington Post offers a very insightful look at how American culture is obsessed with the women who are "falling apart":

Most American women are becoming ever more comfortable with their capabilities as they break into new professional roles, learn how to do electrical wiring or automobile maintenance, tackle life insurance, IRAs and tax planning on behalf of the many configurations of family they are nurturing, or even put their lives on the line as warriors in Iraq. They are surprising themselves and the culture every day by not falling apart as they take on tasks that the prefeminist world was sure would lead them to collapse in a heap, needing smelling salts.

Yet at the same time, the culture seems increasingly obsessed with showcasing images of glamorous young women who are falling apart -- sometimes seriously, even fatally.

Wolfe goes on to note how Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Marilyn Monroe, Anna Nicole Smith and Princess Diana are the women who dominate the headlines.

What's most interesting here, though, is the way Wolfe traces this fascination far back into American history. In fact, Wolfe claims, this sexist tendency to shift the focus away from strong, capable women began deep in the 19th Century when, in order to combat a burgeoning women's movement, the popularized female images were "those of women pale and weak with tuberculosis, those who died young and frail, who could barely raise themselves up from their languid sickbeds."

Although Wolfe doesn't go there, her thesis helps explain America's addiction to reality shows.

If you take a look at the Kat Angus and Addi Stewart's recent list in the Edmonton Journal of the Top 10 worst reality shows (inspired by the dreaded premiere of NBC's "Age of Love" Monday night), it's amazing to see how much of their worst-ness comes at the expense of women. From "The Swan" to "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?" to "For Love or Money," Angus and Stewart point out how these shows got all their mileage out of making women appear desperate, shrill or just weak.

Speaking of "Age of Love," Jenn Pozner at Women in Media & News performed a brilliant step-by-step deconstruction of the first episode as she watched it. Pozner has previously written about how reality TV degrades women for Ms. Magazine. Within the first 10 minutes of this latest sad example, the show had, according to Pozner, "wracked up so many of the genre’s contrived cliches that if you were playing a reality TV drinking game, you’d be sloshed by minute fifteen." She explains:

– in this “experiment,” one man has all the agency while dozens of women in their 40s and their 20s are expected to fight amongst themselves like children for his attention

– single women over 40 are portrayed as pathetic, lovelorn losers (despite their accomplishments in life)

– women in their 20s are portrayed as sexy, nubile sirens (desirable as girlfriend material despite being depicted as ditzy and dumb; they even pose them against poles, get it?)

– the narrator promises that “the claws will come out” as “each week, you’ll see young verses old in a battle for love”

I myself tuned in for the first few minutes -- but was so turned off and, frankly, bored by these well-worn sexist cliches that I couldn't even convince the cultural critic inside of me to continue watching.

In light of Wolfe's argument, though, Pozner's close analysis provides damning evidence that -- whether it be female celebrities or the "ordinary" women of reality TV -- those cliches are still a dominant American ideology.

In my analysis of the "I've Got a Crush ... on Obama" video, I haven't been too kind to Hillary Clinton's idea of having a "Choose Our Campaign Song" contest. It seems simultaneously a desperate attempt at online relevancy and considering the final choice of songs, a fairly lame attempt to appease a diverse audience.

But I must give Hillary some props for spoofing the final scene in "The Sopranos" to introduce (or almost introduce) the winner of the contest. The video, which includes a great cameo from Bill, does way more than any song could do to show her smarts and self-confidence -- not to mention her fluency with the pop culture moment.

But all that might be for naught when America realizes that the winner ends up being ... a Canadian?

That overshadows the fact that the song itself, in Steve Johnson's words, "sounds at once inorganic and schmaltzy, and the lyrics are the sort of vaguely life-affirming stuff that even Hallmark tries to avoid these days."

Update: Celine Dion is "thrilled" and "flattered." Canada.com -- no joke -- has a nice wrap-up of the contest..

For those of you who might be skeptical of what I contend is the layered satire of the "Crush ... on Obama" video, it might mean something that the creators of ObamaGirl "LOVE" the interpretation.

Satire, unlike many other literary arts, usually requires some authorial intention. And the best satire guides the readers/watchers into the ironic perspective, however subtly, allowing them to see the serious or semi-serious point behind it all.

Clearly the creators are conscious that they are parodying the standard female R&B/hip hop video (and, as I said before, they make it clear they were also responding to the "Choose a Campaign Song" contest on Hillary Clinton's website). Even casual watchers of those types of videos pick up on the parody immediately.

But even if you are outside of that in-the-know audience, wandering around the video's companion website -- barelypolitical.com -- puts the video in an even clearer context. With links to The Onion as well as Jon Stewart and other late-night comedians, there's little doubt through what lens we are supposed to see the video itself.

And in case I didn't go far enough in my original post, read my exchange with critic Steve Johnson in the comments, where I explicitly state what I believe the video's satirical (but not necessarily "high-minded") message might be.

Charles McGrath in the New York Times adeptly discusses the reasons why the interrupted ending of "The Sopranos" incited such passion -- both positive and negative -- over the past week. Paraphrasing literary critic Frank Kermode, he writes that "we crave endings for the same reason that some religious sects look forward to the Apocalypse -- because it's the ending that gives shape and meaning to the otherwise random events that precede it."

While he looks at the most popular interpretations, he also offers one of his own:

If you were fashionably inclined, you could also give the ending a meta-reading. What is that dark screen but an image of the darkness that was there before you turned your TV on in the first place?

In this interpretation we are reminded, the way we are reminded, say, by all the textual gimmicks in "Tristram Shandy," that what we have been attending to is a construct -- a show, in this case. Not only that, but we also realize that Tony never lived in West Caldwell, N.J., at all, but inside our sets, where he resides still, granted a gift that is about the last that we would ever have expected for him: immortality.

It's a compelling reading -- and one that is similar to my own initial interpretation, which argued that the ending reveals that Tony's story is, in fact, our story.

Sexploitation: 70 percent of the viewers for "Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search for the Next Model" on CW are female. The percentages are pretty much the same for reality shows of the same ilk like "The Ultimate Cowboy Ugly Search" and "Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders: Making the Team" on CMT. Is this surprising? According to Erin White of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, it should be, considering that most of these shows "feature scantily-clad females in what many would say are situations that degrade women and turn back the clock on generations of feminist work." Even the CMT executives she interviewed thought the viewers of their shows, which clearly employ a "male gaze," would at least be "pretty evenly split."

To me, however, any surprise at those percentages only reflects a naivete about the way in which corporate capitalism constructs desires and needs. The real question is how many of the female viewers, despite their dismissive statements that the shows are just "guilty pleasures," are looking at the women -- and themselves -- through male eyes.

I Think This Might Be Overdone: Not that we need another article about how men -- can you believe it?!? -- actually like to cook. But Pervaiz Shallwan of the AP reveals a series of noteworthy ways in which the marketing of cooking to men has significantly changed. The Food Network reports that although they from the beginning aimed their programming at women, "men quickly tuned in and now account for half of all viewers." Men's Health magazine reports that while the recipe section used to be the least read (and they sometimes actually left it out), now it's the most popular section -- and they now devote over a quarter of the magazine to food and nutrition. The editors and publishers of Food and Wine and Cooks Illustrated, as well as Rachael Ray, have all also recognized a growing male audience. Even Maxim -- do they have no shame? -- is launching a line of salsa and barbecue sauces.

Of course, all of this says more about the entrenched biases of the cooking and marketing industries than the men themselves -- who never seem to have a problem dominating the kitchen in places they actually pay good money (only 20 percent of professional chefs are women, Shallwan also notes).

That Darn Media: From the latest poll numbers, Hillary seems to be successfuly walking the line between the center right and the left (she's leading among both self-described "liberal democrats" as well as "moderate/conservative democrats"). She also probably considers it a victory to have conservatives like Brent Bozell giving her favorable coverage for her "courage" in taking on Hollywood.

Bozell actually makes several valid points about both Clinton's strategic, and somewhat hypocritical, stance against an immoral media culture. Unfortunately, what he (and many others whom Clinton is trying to appease) see as "media literacy" is actually just a cover for the promotion of a very specific moral agenda. What would really be courageous would be for a candidate to start talking about media literacy from an educational rather than a moral standpoint -- as a tool of empowerment rather than censorship.

That Darn Spanish Media: Arnold Schwarzenegger believes that Latinos -- if they really want to succeed in America -- must tune out Spanish-language newspapers, TV and radio. What's interesting here -- besides Schwarzenegger's myopic sense that what worked from him coming from Austria will work for everyone -- is that the criticism of his remarks seems somewhat tepid. It appears that English-only advocates have staked out a place of legitimacy on the cultural battlefield.

Unfortunately, in the heat of the battle, the complicated relationship between language, power and cultural heritage gets lost -- and the simplicity of the "all or nothing" strategy too often wins the day.

Just Let Jack Bauer Try to Defuse This One: The Pentagon once seriously contemplated an Air Force proposal in 1994 that called for a "gay bomb" -- "a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting." We don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Thanks to the Berkeley's Sunshine Project for uncovering this gem (see their scanned copy [pdf] of the original proposal). And thanks to Raw Story for original link.

The new comedy "Knocked Up" -- directed Judd Apatow, who would be in the PopPolitics Hall of Fame (if we had one) as the creator of "Freak and Geeks" -- has received almost universal praise for its honest portrayal of the complications of pregnancy and parenting. But the biggest cultural controversy it has spawned involves its avoidance of even a discussion of abortion -- which is only jokingly considered once as the option that "rhymes with shmashmortion."

Dana Stevens in Slate provides an insightful analysis of the film's abortion politics -- in which she laments the film's presumed lack of moral conviction:

Apatow's reticence on the subject seems to spring less from personal conviction than from the fear of offending his audience's sensibilities. This kind of Trojan horse moralism is maddeningly common in pop-culture representations of abortion, which seem muzzled, invisibly policed, by either the pro-life lobby or the fear of it.

As if to confirm Stevens suspicions, Michael Medved, among other conservative critics, admires what he sees as the film's "potent pro-life message."

Other more liberal critics, such as Tracy Clark-Flory of Salon, come to Apatow's defense:

The whole thing seems pretty simple to me: The story line revolves around Katherine Heigl's character getting pregnant and having a baby -- if she were to have an abortion there wouldn't be a movie. That she decides to have the baby doesn't strike me as offensive or an overt, anti-choice statement.

A.O. Scott of the New York Times goes so far as to see the passing reference to "shmashmortion" as an intentional satire of our cultural reluctance to use the real word.

From a more objective perspective, J. Peder Zane of the News and Observer provides a nicely researched overview of pop culture's abortion taboo.

Whatever the final verdict on the absent presence of abortion in "Knocked Up," Zane's piece makes it clear that, when it comes to honest portrayals of reproductive options, Hollywood has a long way to go.

Everyone has their refuge. I have always felt, though, that those of us who find it in the game of basketball are a special breed.

Basketball is simultaneously the sport of posturing and the sport of intimacy. It is the most urban, neighborhood-y of sports, requiring limited space and limited supplies -- but it is also the most poetic, nothing being as aesthetically pleasing as basketball players weaving seamlessly together or one of them soaring above them all.

And, among all major sports, it is the most accessible and diverse. People of all backgrounds and genders can see the elegant simplicity of picking up a ball, bouncing it a few times, and throwing it into a hoop. The distance between pick-up players and professionals, of course, is wide (and tall, very tall), but in no other sport can even the lowliest of ordinary players have a true moment of transcendence when they able to hit the same -- really, the identical -- long or crazy shot they just saw the star do.

Yeah, I love basketball.

So if I didn't already have a high and hopeful opinion of Barack Obama, I would now, after reading Jodi Kantor's exploration of how much basketball means to him:

At first, it was a tutorial in race, a way for a kid with a white mother, a Kenyan father and a peripatetic childhood to establish the African-American identity that he longed for. In "Dreams From My Father," Mr. Obama described basketball as a comfort to a boy whose father was mostly absent, and who was one of only a few black youths at his school. "At least on the basketball court I could find a community of sorts," he wrote.

Of course, as his career grew, basketball also became a source of community networking, a place where Obama met allies such as Alexi Giannoulias -- now Illinois state treasurer -- and kept in touch with other Chicago-area political luminaries like Arne Duncan, the head of the Chicago public school system. Unlike golf and other traditional networking venues, though, the basketball court created a more "democratic" space:

Though some of these men could afford to build courts at their own homes, they pride themselves on the democratic nature of basketball, on showing up at South Side parks and playing with whoever is around. At the University of Chicago court where he and Mr. Obama used to play, "You might have someone from the street and a potential Nobel Prize winner on the same team," Mr. Duncan said. "It's a great equalizer."

It is a theme that runs throughout Mr. Obama's basketball career: a desire to be perceived as a regular guy despite great advantage and success. As a teenager, he slipped away from his tony school to university courts populated by "gym rats and has-beens" who taught him "that respect came from what you did and not who your daddy was," Mr. Obama wrote.

Unfortunately, Obama's present schedule keeps him away from his favorite game -- but that's nothing that a hoop on the South Lawn wouldn't solve.

This week the National Post of Canada goes where very few media outlets have gone before: an academic conference.

Here's the editor's note that appears above the first report in the series:

When 5,000 academics gather this week in Saskatoon for the annual Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, everything from the geography of shopping to gender in governing will be on the agenda. In a week-long series, the National Post explores some of the most interesting research being showcased.

Now, usually I'm not one to make generalizations about how attitudes in other countries are radically different from those in the United States. Most of those assumptions are made by either a very biased personal experience or from a very small sample of elite members of the respective societies.

But can you imagine an American newspaper -- let alone an American TV news channel -- making this same commitment?

Of course, this is at the core of what's wrong with American news. When it comes to politics and culture (as opposed to scientific or medical topics), American media refuses to acknowledge that there are experts in the field that can provide research-based answers to many of our questions. Instead, we rely on "pundits" who are experts at looking good and providing the catchy soundbite.

Ironically, Zosia Bielski's first report from the conference for the National Post -- in which she reviews recent "findings" concerning the current state of feminism -- shows that academics don't always have the right answers.

East Carolina University Professor Donna Lillian's research on the increasingly infrequent use of the word "Ms." is fascinating and ultimately depressing -- especially when it's the younger generations who are the ones less likely to being using "Ms."

But Jennifer Crawford -- a Ph.D. student at Saint Mary's University in Halifax -- misses the mark in her criticism of the Feminist Majority Foundation's "This is What a Feminist Looks Like" campaign:

"Is this -- this slogan on the fuchsia baby tee, or italicized in screen-print across a cute tote bag, or pinned with good intentions on to the lapel of a jacket, this shut-down of communication -- is this what feminism looks like?" asks Ms. Crawford in a session called "Who Cares What a Feminist Looks Like? Inscriptions of Gender, Sexuality and Personal Politics" [...]

She admonishes the campaign for feigning accessibility with four ethnically diverse women, a clear message that "feminism is for everybody," but launching it with freshly scrubbed Ashley Judd, the "conventionally aesthetically pleasing and feminine actress."

Ms. Crawford also notes that all four women are "beautiful, successful, affluent and reasonably sized," which in her mind excludes the "man-hating, hairy, angry queer," one of the most "political and passionate demographics of the feminist community," the "devout feminist" she insists has been discarded as a negative stereotype.

Yes, these women are celebrities -- not "ordinary" people. But that's the point. The celebrities that everyone knows -- either admires or hates -- also happen to be feminists.

And considering that they were going to celebrities, it's hard to imagine four more "real" women -- not all stereotypically "beautiful," not all "reasonably-sized." Certainly Ashley Judd can be considered an image of traditional Hollywood glamour in some of her movies and on the red carpet, but I have seen just as many pictures of her attending benefits and other socially conscious functions with short hair, a t-shirt and jeans -- the uniform, I'm presuming, of Crawford's "devout feminist." She appears that way, in fact, on the cover of Ms.

I'm aware of the dangers of dumbing down or commercializing feminism (although these days I'm more worried about the demonization of feminism). It just isn't happening here.

And even though I'm taking issue with this particular academic argument, I appreciate the fact that the National Post is giving me something to ponder. The news rarely does that these days.

I should note that a couple of months ago I took the National Post of Canada to task for their well-intentioned but somewhat simplistic and reductive look at the "Menaissance" -- what they claimed in a series of related articles as the return of "guys being guys."

What I should have recognized back then -- and praised -- was the significance of Post's willingness to provide a broad, in-depth analysis of a complex issue. I'll try not to make that mistake again.